Learning About Learning

So I'm in the middle of an effort to learn how people learn. My daughter has a variant of ADD. I'm not going to get into an existence proof of ADD, suffice it to say that I am convinced it exists. In her case, I suspect it came about because of delayed brain development as an infant. She spent the first 15 months of her life in a Russian orphanage with minimal stimulation.

In any case, we're now trying to learn how to learn while mentally disorganized. With the help of our local librarian, I came across the SOAR system. So far the best part of SOAR has been its description of how we learn. The claim is that when you first hear a new concept, it goes into short-term memory. Short-term memory can be seen as a messy file cabinet where stuff is just piled all over the place. After about 24 hours, the brain discards anything that hasn't been reinforced, or in terms of the analogy, put away in it's proper place.

Using that analogy, I wonder if ADD shortens the duration of short-term memory. For the ADD person, is it 6 hours? 4 hours? 20 minutes? In my daughter's case, she struggles mightily with organizational skills and memory of all kinds. I'm wondering if the memory reinforcement techniques I'm learning in the SOAR system will help. They certainly make sense in the analogy.

After we've tried it for a while, I'll post a deeper review of what we've learned.

According to SOAR, you need to review the information before it gets swept away and ask questions about it in order to file it properly.